Stater Bros. Markets is expanding its partnership with Afresh, advancing plans to extend AI-driven fresh replenishment beyond produce into additional fresh departments and upstream into distribution center (DC) forecasting. The move creates a more unified approach to managing fresh inventory across the supply chain — from store ordering through DC buying.
Following the successful deployment of Afresh’s Fresh Replenishment in produce in 2025, Stater Bros. says it will scale the platform to additional fresh departments, while implementing Afresh’s DC Forecast to guide upstream procurement. Together, these deployments enhance existing business processes with a connected system that links real store demand directly to buying decisions, supporting the company’s commitment to delivering fresh, affordable food.
Produce Results Drive Stater Bros.’ Expansion
The expansion follows strong results from the company’s initial Fresh Replenishment deployment in produce, which achieved:
- Sustained improvements in product availability and ordering accuracy through AI-powered replenishment
- Significant reductions in food waste, setting a performance benchmark across fresh categories
- Improved inventory efficiency, optimizing on-hand levels and freeing up working capital
- Strong store-level adoption of Afresh’s AI order recommendations, underscoring operational trust and ease of use
“We’ve been impressed with Afresh’s partnership with our teams,” says Bertha Luna, executive vice president, store operations for Stater Bros. Markets. “They took the time to earn trust, and the results speak for themselves; produce shrink is down, shelves are full and our customers notice the difference. When teammates see a solution that supports their work, adoption follows naturally.”
For decades, Stater Bros. says produce buying has been guided by deep expertise and hands-on merchandising practices. As the company modernized its fresh operations, it adopted traditional forecasting tools commonly used in center-store categories. While effective for more stable items, these technologies struggled to keep pace with the complexity and variability of fresh products.
Fresh categories require frequent ordering, rapid response to changing conditions and close alignment between stores and distribution centers, the grocer says. In contrast, center-store forecasting tools treat demand as static, relying on weekly snapshots and historical averages.
These limitations became more pronounced during promotions and for commodity items such as bulk and catch-weight products, often resulting in store shortages, excess aging inventory or missed sales. As a result, Stater Bros. says much of its produce procurement remained manual, despite the presence of center-store technology, with buyers spending hours synthesizing data across tools and spreadsheets to answer fundamental questions, such as how many strawberries to order two weeks in advance.
To address these challenges, Stater Bros. sought a more dynamic fresh solution, one capable of adapting to promotions, seasonality and the natural variability inherent in fresh and commodity items.
Afresh’s DC Forecast met those needs by providing an AI platform purpose-built for fresh buying nuances, including SKU mismatches, multiple vendors and frequent delivery schedules. Built on real store demand and an understanding of how inventory flows, turns and ages across the network, the system enables teams to plan proactively, align decisions upstream and respond more effectively to change across the supply chain.
“Fresh operations don’t follow a single, predictable path — signals change, conditions shift and outcomes vary,” says Matt Schwartz, CEO for Afresh. “By extending the same intelligence from store ordering into DC procurement, Stater Bros. is aligning decisions across the supply chain on a system built to operate under that uncertainty. When inventory decisions learn from each other instead of operating in silos, retailers can reduce waste, improve service levels and deliver the freshness customers expect.”
With a unified system connecting stores and the distribution center, Stater Bros. says it is strengthening service to stores while supporting fresher products, more efficient inventory flow and continued operational excellence.
Reconnecting Buyers to the Business
By reducing manual calculations and data mining across multiple tools, Afresh is fundamentally changing how Stater Bros.’ buyers spend their time. Instead of reconciling numbers from behind a screen, buyers can now focus their energy on the warehouse floor, observing product condition, validating expectations and building stronger relationships with suppliers and warehouse teammates. This shift enables procurement teams to improve fill rates, ensure better in-stock conditions in stores and deliver a more consistent customer shopping experience.
“Having spent my career in fresh produce, in both retail and sales and merchandising, I know firsthand the hours consumed by synthesizing data and relying on guesswork for critical fresh decisions,” says Jacob Cadwallader, director of produce for Stater Bros. Markets. “Afresh’s interconnected system, coordinating decisions from the store to the DC, is the breakthrough we’ve needed to improve accuracy and efficiency. Automating forecasting allows our buying teams to stay laser-focused on supporting our stores, sharpen long-term purchasing decisions and strengthen our commitment to delivering the quality our customers expect from us.”
The Packer reached out to Afresh CEO Matt Schwartz to learn more.
The Packer: Afresh DC Forecast is purpose-built to handle SKU mismatches and multiple vendors. In the produce world, a buyer might see one SKU for a 1-pound strawberry clamshell at the store level but be sourcing that from three different vendors with three different pack sizes or cost structures at the DC level. How does your AI bridge that data gap, so the DC buyer sees a unified demand signal without getting lost in the translation between store needs and vendor offerings?
Schwartz: The core issue is that most retail systems were designed for static supply chains, where one barcode equals one product. That assumption works fine in center store, but it breaks down completely in fresh, where sourcing is inherently fluid.
In fresh, the same item on the shelf can be supplied by different growers, in different pack formats, at different costs — and that can change week to week. Traditional systems treat each of those changes as a new item, which fragments demand history and makes sales, replenishment, forecasts and inventory data unreliable.
Afresh takes a different approach. We designed our platform and data model specifically to handle this variability. Rather than tying demand to a specific vendor or pack, we focus on the underlying consumer intent — what the shopper is actually buying — and keep that demand signal continuous even as sourcing changes behind the scenes.
For grocers, that means they don’t have to manually reconcile shifting SKUs or rebuild history every time supply changes. They see a clear, consistent view of demand and can then make the best purchasing decision based on what’s available that day.
The practical result is that the normal realities of fresh such as vendor churn, pack changes, seasonal sourcing, no longer disrupt the forecast. Demand stays stable even as supply changes, so decisions get easier and teams can focus on buying well instead of managing noise.
Stater Bros. is moving upstream into DC forecasting to plan further in advance. You’ve noted in the past that Afresh can estimate demand more than a month out. For highly volatile produce items like berries or leafy greens, where quality and price can shift in 48 hours, how does the system balance a long-term, 30-day procurement plan with the need to be hyper-reactive to the real-time store demand signals you’re getting from the Stater Bros. shelves?
In fresh, planning further ahead is essential, but those plans can’t be rigid. Quality, pricing and weather can shift in a matter of days, especially for items like berries or leafy greens. Any buyer who’s lived through a heatwave or a quality turn knows that firsthand.
Rather than relying on a single static forecast, Afresh gives Stater Bros. visibility weeks out to support procurement, trucking and vendor coordination, while still refining demand every day based on what’s actually happening in stores.
Just as important, the DC forecast is driven by store demand not by warehouse shipments or yesterday’s buys. If quality drops and sales slow at the shelf, that signal shows up upstream quickly. Buyers aren’t stuck chasing an outdated plan; future requirements adjust as conditions change.
The result is that Stater Bros. can plan confidently further out without getting locked into numbers that don’t hold up. Buyers stay highly reactive day to day, while still operating with a forward-looking view that supports better sourcing decisions and fewer surprises.
For customers using our Fresh Buying solution, we layer the operational reality on top of that demand signal to automate execution as well.
